Poll campaigning starts in Algeria

Reuters/AlgiersCampaigning for Algeria’s election opened yesterday with the man expected to win, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, starting his race not with a speech or a mass rally, but with a letter.With questions lingering about the state of his health after a stroke last year, Bouteflika, 77, began his campaign writing to Algerians to say his condition would not stop him extending his 15 years governing the North African state.Backed by the Front de Liberation Nationale party, which has dominated Algerian politics since independence in 1962, and with major opposition parties boycotting the vote, Bouteflika is almost assured of another five-year term.Loyalists see the independence veteran as a guarantor of stability, crediting him with piloting Algeria out of chaos after a 1990s civil war with Islamists in which 200,000 people were killed.Bouteflika’s opponents say the dominance of a clan of FLN veterans make the election an unfair battle, and they ask how the president will govern if he cannot even campaign.Since the stroke that put him in Paris hospital for several months, Bouteflika has rarely appeared. He has spoken in public only to announce his candidacy, at the start of March.El Watan newspaper, often critical of Bouteflika’s re-election bid, ran a cartoon on its front page on Sunday with a man peering into a hollow, empty campaign poster with Bouteflika’s name, asking: “Is there anyone in there?”Opposition parties, including the secular RCD and the Islamist MSP parties, are boycotting the April 17 ballot. But they remain weak and their protest is unlikely to dent Bouteflika’s chances.In downtown Algiers yesterday, there were barely any electoral posters along the bustling boulevards lined with white buildings dating back to French colonial rule.“It will be Bouteflika for me,” said Abdel Waheed, 29, a salesman in downtown Algiers. “He is the one who brought this country forward, he is the one who gave us reconciliation.”